Definition
Latin: "on the fourth day after." In the former English common law practice, the fourth day inclusive after the return of a writ, upon which a defendant was required to make his appearance in court. The counting was inclusive, meaning the return day itself counted as the first day. If the defendant appeared on or by that fourth day, the appearance was timely; failure to appear opened him to default. The term functioned as a scheduling marker within the writ system, not a substantive legal standard.
Common Confusion
The phrase is occasionally misread as requiring appearance on exactly the fourth day, as if earlier appearance were insufficient. In practice, the defendant could appear at any point through the fourth day. The term names the outer limit, not a fixed calendar event. Researchers should also be careful not to conflate quarto die post with the return day itself — the two are distinct moments in the sequence: the return day is when the writ was returnable to court; quarto die post is the subsequent deadline for the defendant's appearance.
Why It Matters in Research
This term is a relic of English common law pleading procedure and will appear almost exclusively in pre-nineteenth-century English practice materials and in American sources written before procedural codes displaced the common law writ system. Researchers encountering quarto die post in case records, writs, or procedural treatises should understand they are looking at an artifact of the old system of original writs — specifically, the mechanics of how defendants were summoned and when they were required to answer.
The phrase will surface in Year Books, early English case reports, and treatises such as Blackstone's Commentaries (Book III) and Tidd's Practice — both cited by Rapalje & Lawrence as the authoritative sources. In American research, the term may appear in colonial-era or early republic court records that tracked English practice, but it drops from use as states adopted code pleading in the mid-to-late nineteenth century. Searching for this term in post-code-reform materials is unlikely to yield relevant results.
One research trap: Burrill's entry contains text corruption in the digitized source, blending portions of other entries into the quarto die post definition. Any researcher relying on a digitized version of Burrill should verify against a physical copy before treating that text as authoritative on this term.
The broader significance for corpus researchers is that quarto die post is a waypoint into the old writ-and-pleading system. Finding it in a document orients the researcher in procedural history: the document predates or consciously references common law pleading, the writ of summons was the operative mechanism, and the court in question followed English practice on appearance timing.
Historical Dictionary Support
The four historical sources are in close agreement on the core definition. Black's (both editions) and Rapalje & Lawrence track each other closely: fourth day inclusive after return of the writ, defendant's appearance due by that day. Burrill adds the characterization of quarto die post as a "name given" to that day — treating it as a term of art for a specific moment in the procedural calendar rather than merely a description of elapsed time.
Rapalje & Lawrence cite Blackstone (3 Bl. Com. 278) and Tidd's Practice (1 Tidd Pr. 107), the two most authoritative sources on English common law procedure of the period. The note that "this practice was afterwards altered" in Rapalje & Lawrence is significant: it signals that even within English practice, quarto die post was not static. Researchers should not assume the rule operated identically across all periods of English legal history.
Burrill's text as it appears in the source material is clearly corrupted — the entry merges into unrelated discussion of malfeasance and the Louisiana Civil Code, almost certainly a digitization error. The substantive definition Burrill provides before the corruption occurs is consistent with the other sources.
None of the historical sources address American application in any depth, which accurately reflects the term's limited footprint in American legal materials.
Jurisdictional Note
Quarto die post is a term of English common law procedure with no independent American doctrinal life. Some early American jurisdictions adopted English practice by statute or judicial convention, meaning the term may appear in early American court records, but it carries no continuing procedural significance in any U.S. jurisdiction. In English law, the practice was altered before the wholesale reforms of the Judicature Acts (1873–1875), which restructured English civil procedure entirely.